How much will health insurance cost in 2014?

Add eHealth to the long list of companies indicating that the new benefit standards in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could end up raising health insurance costs next year.

On Tuesday we published the results of a study we ran of plans that provide “comprehensive” health insurance benefits. These benefits are somewhat comparable to the new benefits standards in the ACA, but not it’s not accurate to say this is an “apples to apples” comparison.

What we found was that when plans covered 100% of the benefits we’ve been tracking for 7+ years in our Cost and Benefits reports, premiums were 47% higher and deductibles were 27% lower, nationally.

Our numbers may sound high, but they’re actually the lowest among the other estimates we’ve seen. You can read the full report here in our Media Center.

Other sources are listed in this post below the chart.

Here is a chart from that report:

Forbes: In January, Forbes reported that Aetna’s CEO, Mark Bertolini, warned that consumers might face “premium rate shock” in 2014. Bertolini indicated that premiums, unsubsidized, would rise 20 to 50 percent, on average. The same article reported that Blue Shield of California had asked regulators to approve premium increases of up to 20 percent.

Huffington Post: Also in January, Jeffrey Young at the Huffington Post reported that Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said adding benefits to what people have today equates to adding value to the insurance they’re buying then, which could result in premiums going up.”

The Urban Institute: In January of 2012, the Urban Institute went so far as to predict what premiums would be inside and outside of exchanges in 2014, if the individual mandate stayed intact, which it did. In their report, they estimated that individual insurance policies would cost $361, on average, without the Affordable Care Act, compared to $371 with the Affordable Care Act and the individual mandate. They also estimated that, within specific age groups costs would look as follows:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO): In 2009, before the law was passed the CBO estimated that individuals would pay $483 per month, $5,800 per year, on average. And, families would pay $15,200 per year and $1,267 per month.